The Cottage at Glass Beach (8 page)

They busied themselves, drawing maps of the oceans and continents in the sand, the routes they would travel, across the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Coral Sea. Owen returned a short time later with paddles and two faded orange life jackets Maire and their grandmother might have worn when they were girls. “You sure your mother won't mind?”

“We do this all the time.” Ella pinched Annie's arm, so she wouldn't disagree. “She was going to get us paddles anyway. This will save her the trouble.”

“You'd best stay in the cove,” he said, dragging the boat to the tide line, holding the sides while they climbed in, the water pleasantly cool that afternoon. “The currents in the channel can be strong.” He pushed them off.

The land fell away. They were weightless, free. “Hooray! We're part of the ocean!” Annie exclaimed.

Ella plunged her oar into the water, the paddle gliding backward, cutting through the waves like a knife.

Annie wasn't paddling. She gazed around her, awestruck.

“Who are you looking for?”

“No one,” she said quickly. “We're floating. We're really floating!”

“Yeah, and we're going to end up beached if you don't do your job. I ought to fire you.”

“You can't fire me. I'm your sister.”

“Want to bet?” Ella said. “Paddle harder, will you? On my count.”

“Why does it have to be your count?”

“Listen for once,” she said. “It's about working together, having the same rhythm.”

“Does that mean I get a promotion?”

“To what?”

“Second in command.”

“Show me you're ready. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.”

They paddled back and forth across the cove, zigzagging at first, then straightening. Ella scooped up a palm-size jellyfish and threw it at Annie. “Got you!” She seemed disappointed when Annie didn't get upset.

Annie liked the jellyfish. She liked most of the sea creatures she'd met. She reached for another jelly. Ella ducked, but Annie bided her time. The back of Ella's head made a nice target. She knew Ella didn't like getting things in her hair, especially slightly slimy things. The jellies didn't bother Annie. This type had no stingers, nothing to cause harm.

Ella turned forward to see where they were going, casting glances over her shoulder. “I know what you're up to.”

No, you don't. Not everything.
Annie dropped a small stone she'd been carrying in her pocket over the side. Let Ella think it was the jellyfish, that she'd disarmed herself. Her sister relaxed then, and when she did, Annie lobbed the jelly at her head. It clung for a moment, then slid into the water with a plop.

“Ugh!” Ella swiped at her hair, frantic. “Is there anything there?”

Annie smothered a laugh. It was funny to see Ella so worked up.

“I'll get you back. I swear I will.”

“Look,” Annie said. A porpoise leaped at the mouth of the cove, its body making a perfect arc over the water. Another followed, then another. Annie counted four in all, the same number as their family, or their family, as it used to be.

Ella directed them to a sunken rock shelf, teeming with anemones, starfish, crabs, and fish. “It's an undersea garden.”

Another eel lived there. Mr. Eel, Annie called him. She gave many of the creatures names. Anabelle, the largest anemone, waved her lovely pale green tentacles in the current. Carleton, the crab, liked to snap his claws like castanets; he was the size of a salad plate and had a bright red shell with a distinctive blotch on the top like a spin-art design. Stella, the sea star, had bristly skin the color of purple grape juice.

The girls paddled for the better part of an hour, until their arms were burning and their palms were scored with calluses. Owen watched over them from the rocks, casting lines and reeling in the catch. He moved with an easy rhythm, in time with the waves, as if he sensed the ocean's every move, the fish within it too. Ella acted like he wasn't there. Annie waved to him once, but really, she focused on the ocean itself, all of them working its surface, sounding its depths, in their own ways.

“I can't go any farther,” Annie said at last. “My arms feel like noodles.”

“Maybe the sea monster will make spaghetti of you.”

Annie splashed at her with a paddle. “I wouldn't taste very good.”

Ella splashed her back. “Let's race to the beach.”

“Race what?”

“The sea serpent. Didn't you see it?”

Annie looked behind them in alarm, before she realized Ella was teasing again. But it was fun to paddle as hard as they could and feel the waves rise up beneath them, carrying them home. All too soon, the coracle plowed into the beach and they were on land again. They pulled the boat from the water and collapsed on the shore, spent and utterly content for the first time in weeks, making sand angels, tracing shapes in the clouds, gazing up into the depths of the blue, blue sky.

Chapter Seven

E
very July for as long as Maire could remember, her family had picked wild blueberries that grew in the island's meadows. She gathered the buckets they'd need for the expedition—the fruit was early this year—and she had promised Nora and the girls she'd introduce them to the tradition. They'd have a picnic on the boulders once they were done. She couldn't have asked for better weather, not a cloud in the sky. Nothing tasted as good as the wild berries; the others tasted bland by comparison. She liked them best in pie, each slice a piece of heaven, made with her mother's crust.

Maeve had hated picking, finding it tedious work, and made excuses to be elsewhere as soon as she could, but Maire didn't mind. She loved being in the fields, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face, the smell of ripening fruit making her mouth water. She'd worn an apron to protect her clothes from stains, boots on her feet. She liked the sound of the berries pinging into the coffee cans her father had rigged with string handles, sneaking a handful of berries when her mother wasn't looking.
You're like me, Maire. You have a practical nature.

She didn't necessarily want to be that way—competent, average. She was pretty, not beautiful. Intelligent, not brilliant. Quiet, not lively. She wasn't Maeve. She could never be.

“Aren't you coming with us?” she'd asked as Maeve dashed out the door. Maeve was thirteen that year, a year of change, when she suddenly began to care more about her appearance, styling her hair, applying makeup on the sly.

“I'm meeting Brenna in town.” In other words, swanning up and down the street, hoping to catch the attention of the boys.

“What about Maggie?” Maire asked.

She and Maeve had been best friends for years.

“What about her? Save me a slice of pie, will you?”

“When will you be back?”

She didn't reply. She hopped on her bike and pedaled past the mailbox, onto the road that promised better things.

Maire remained behind at the point. Her mother said she was too young to go into Portakinney on her own. And so she stayed where she was.

Where she still was, all those years later.

She sighed. She'd spent far too much time dwelling on the past lately. She might not be able to remember where she put her keys, but she had remarkable recall when it came to the details of her childhood. Perhaps that's what happened as one got older, entering into a time of reflection and regret.

Nora and the girls came up the steps. They wore hats, jeans, and tees, Ella's from a Taylor Swift concert, Annie's with Mickey Mouse, Nora's the B-52's.

Maire distributed some of Joe's cotton work shirts. “You might want to toss these on to protect your arms. The bushes don't have thorns, but the twigs can scratch, and there are brambles about.”

“How long is this going to take?” Ella asked, clearly lacking enthusiasm.

“It depends how fast you pick,” Maire said.

“I'm a good picker,” Annie said.

“Of your nose,” Ella said.

“I am not!”

“Manners,” Nora said.

“Oh, we don't stand on ceremony around here,” Maire assured her, “in case you hadn't noticed.” She put on one of Joe's caps.

They decided to walk. The fields were only half a mile away, and they could always go back and harvest more berries later. There was no need to resort to freezing yet.

There was no traffic on the road. There rarely was, no matter the time of day. The next house was a half mile in the other direction.

“It's so quiet here,” Ella said. “Don't you ever get tired of it?”

That's what Maeve had said. “We're stuck on this little island, when there's so much out there.”

“Then leave,” Maire had said, though she didn't mean it.

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

Maeve wouldn't say.

I
don't mind. I'm used to it,” Maire said now.

“Have you ever been to the city? To Boston?”

“Once,” she said. “A long time ago.” She and Joe had visited for a weekend. They'd seen Faneuil Hall. So much traffic, lights, noise. She didn't have the best time. She'd had too much on her mind.

“It's not quiet here, not really,” Annie said. “There are all sorts of sounds: the bees, the birds, the trees, the ocean, the grass, the animals—”

“You talking. Blah, blah, blah,” Ella said.

Nora shook her head at her and whispered, “Stop.”

“This way.” Maire turned onto a wooded path, the shade cool.

The ground was carpeted with moss. Annie ran her hands over a patch, exclaiming in delight as she leaned down and rubbed her cheek over its softness.

“There might be bugs,” Ella warned.

“I don't care. It's like velvet.”

“It's just moss.”

“Not any old moss. Island moss.”

“As if that makes a difference.”

“It does. I keep telling you, things are different here, but you don't listen.”

“They're different here, all right.”

They were, though not as Ella supposed. Even now, the island could surprise Maire. Life could surprise her, with its twists and turns.

The path wound through the pines. A squirrel scrambled up a trunk, chattering from a bough, another answering a short distance away. A warning or a territorial dispute. Annie stopped to watch, entranced, before falling into step behind her sister again, occasionally treading on her heels.

“Watch where you're going, will you?”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to.”

Words Maire herself had said to Maeve, time and again, when she broke her lipstick or stained her favorite shirt or followed her without being invited. “Mae-Mae,” she'd cry when she was little, stranded behind the gate in the yard. “Is that your little sister?” Maeve's friends would ask. “No,” she'd say.

The path opened onto the field, the blueberry bushes scattered among the grass and boulders. The place had changed little since Maire was young. “Here we are.” Some of the fruit hadn't ripened yet, the berries green and pink.

They fanned out, Nora and Maire working in the same area, Ella striding off on her own, Annie close behind. “Find your own bush,” Ella said.

Annie stuck out her tongue and settled nearby.

Ella saw her reach for a pink berry. “Only the blue ones. Those won't taste good.”

Annie ate it anyway, just to spite her, making a face at the sharp taste of the unripe fruit.

“Told you.”

“I like them that way.”

“Sure you do.”

Soon the field rang with the patter of berries dropping into the buckets Maire had fashioned from cans, just like her father's. It was a sound like rain on a tin roof. In the distance, she heard the rumble of the sea—it was always there, the island not large enough to escape it. She was glad for that. The waves, whether near or far, made her feel as if she were part of something greater than herself.

“How many do you have?” Annie asked a short time later, clearly keen to outperform her sister.

“I don't know.” Ella wiped her brow. “Thirty? They're small. It's hard to tell.”

“I have fifty.”

“Is that counting leaves?”

Annie wasn't the cleanest of berry pickers.

“No.” She stood on tiptoe to reach the higher branches, upending her bucket. “Oh,” she cried. “I spilled them.”

“I told you to be careful.”

“I know. I know.” Her lower lip trembled.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, don't cry. You can have some of mine.” Ella reluctantly poured half her berries into Annie's container.

They worked happily until noon, even Ella getting into a groove. “How much do we need for a pie?” she asked.

“We almost have enough,” Maire said, inspecting the buckets.

“Can we make it this afternoon?”

“Of course.” She could think of nothing better.

Nora had fallen silent. She was staring across the field, gripping the handle of her bucket tightly, her face pale.

Maire followed her gaze. Maggie Scanlon was standing there, a shadow beneath the pines. She felt a chill seeing her like that, so still, an unnerving intensity in her eyes.

The insects in the meadow whined louder, a shrill, almost piercing sound cutting through the quiet morning.

Maggie didn't move. She stood motionless, watching.

Maire waved, a neighborly gesture to break the spell.

Maggie didn't respond. She stepped back into the shadows and vanished from sight.

The girls hadn't noticed, crouched behind a tall clump of bushes. It was just as well.

“What did she want?” Nora asked softly.

“She was probably just out for her daily constitutional,” Maire said, not very convincingly. “We're an island of walkers, you know, myself included.” Though she too found Maggie's unexpected appearance strange, very strange indeed.

A
fter lunch the girls and Nora cleaned the berries in the cottage kitchen, picking off stray stems and leaves, while Maire mixed the pastry according to her mother's recipe.

“Can we roll out the dough?” Annie asked.

“Yes,” Maire said. “You can use leaf-shaped cookie cutters to make a design if you want to.”

While Nora sweetened the fruit, the girls wielded the rolling pin. If the thickness of the crust wasn't quite as uniform as usual, it was of little consequence to Maire. It was their pie, after all—their first island pie.

“Careful,” Ella warned her sister as they flopped the lower crust in the pan. “You don't want to put a hole in it.”

“I won't.” Annie turned back to the counter. “Look. I made a dough person.” She held up paper-doll cutout she'd shaped from a scrap of crust. “Can we put her on the pie?”

“Absolutely,” Maire said.

“I'll make three others. We can be a pie family.”

“A fabulous idea. I've never had a pie family before,” Maire said.

Nora poured in the filling. “This looks delicious.” She licked the juice from her fingers. If she was still shaken from the encounter with Maggie, she didn't show it, but then, she was good at hiding her feelings.

“Now for the top,” Maire said.

The girls flipped the other circle over the filling. They worked together to crimp the edge. Maire cut a slit in the top and Annie and Ella arranged the cutouts they'd made, so that the figures were holding hands. Maire smiled. “It's darling. Really, it is.”

Annie clapped her hands, sending little clouds of flour into the air, Ella too. “Flour power!” Annie cried.

“Outside with that, you two.” Nora shooed them onto the deck. “We'll call you when the pie's ready.” She began wiping down the counters with a sponge. “Sorry about the mess.”

“A happy mess. It comes with the territory.” Maire caught her looking out the window, brow creased.

“Don't worry,” she said. “Maggie's not there.”

“I don't want to be paranoid, but that was odd, wasn't it, seeing her there? She isn't following me, is she?”

“She has a tendency to wander sometimes. It's nothing personal.”

“It seems like it is.”

A car horn blasted from the driveway, startling them. But it was only Polly, delivering the mail. She came in the side door, a circular and a copy of
Gardens Illustrated
in hand. “No bills today, you'll be happy to know. I smell something delicious,” she said. “Blueberry pie? I don't suppose you could spare a piece.” She turned to Nora. “Maire makes the best pies on the island. The best everything, for that matter. She's quite the chef. I can barely boil water.”

“Have a seat,” Maire said. “It will be coming out of the oven any minute. Your timing couldn't be better.”

Both for the pie, and for the distraction.